Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Khan Academy: Computer Science

khanacademy.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 188 posts

Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science

#31

Post by brador »

sosuke wrote: post #24
brador wrote: post #21

Khan Academy has so much potential to be disruptive yet it feels squandered. Why's it taking so long? What's the money being used for?

What would you suggest to change that? I love Khan Academy as a learning tool for myself but I wouldn't have the first idea on what to do next with it.

Adaptive learning is the way forward. They've been planning it for ages and it's taking way too long to roll out fully.

I'm gunning to compete with my own platform, but he's in as a non-profit which means a for-profit doesn't stand a chance, especially with the timescales the sector operates on.

The only way to create something to compete and light that fire under their ass would be a "generous donation". I think I could do it though, within a year tops, but unfortunately, I need to eat...

Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science

#32

Post by latortuga »

cantbecool wrote: post #26
jwallaceparker wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. To me the biggest hurdle in programming is not the programming itself but the sys-admin effort to setup a development environment.

I know this is a shot in the dark, but if you're a Rails developer, use Heroku. It takes a lot of pain out of an applications deployment.

development environment, not deployment. You're certainly right about deployment but it's sort of a non-sequitor to the post you're responding to :)

Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science

#33

Post by capnrefsmmat »

danso wrote: post #14

I've never used a Khan Academy video but that's out of pure negligence on my part, not skepticism. That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc. See the comments on this article about how to do a Fibonacci recursive exampl…

> That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc.

I've dug up a lot of papers on effectiveness of teaching strategies in physics in particular (since I'm a physics student), and it seems in physics that your time spent working practice problems and making predictions about experiments is more important than actual lectures.

An example:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6031/862.abstract

If anything, I think the Khan Academy is best suited for a mixed approach where students watch lecture videos, then attend a problem session or help session to work examples, get help on exercises, and so on. The Khan Academy's exercise framework is an important step in this direction, and I hope they continue to improve it.

Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science

#34

Post by manish_gill »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #29
manish_gill wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc. It's a lot better than some of in-person lectures I've taken, but maybe that's just me. I've been encouraging my peers to use online videos as a source to learn stuff they have a hard ti…

C or C++ are definitely not a good idea. The beginners' brains will be too occupied with curly brackets and semi-colon. There's also the brain-dead notation for types (see function pointers). The poor souls already have a hard time differentiating assignment and comparison, just because of counter-intuitive notation (compared to high school). As experts, syntax doesn't annoy us. We see past the curly brackets (or the…

Yeah, but I still advocate the use of C++ over Python. Just because of the fact that I can now appreciate what goes on under the hood instead of groaning that why should I learn it when the "language takes care of it". Many classmates of mine really enjoy Java because of they had learned C++ first. It's a harder learning curve, but I think it's worth it.

Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science

#35

Post by jcampbell1 »

danso wrote: post #14

I've never used a Khan Academy video but that's out of pure negligence on my part, not skepticism. That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc. See the comments on this article about how to do a Fibonacci recursive exampl…

Kahn makes a big mistake in pronouncing the assignment operator as "equals" in the first video. The assignment operator should be pronounced as "gets".

Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science

#36

Post by mwidarto »

danso wrote: post #14

I've never used a Khan Academy video but that's out of pure negligence on my part, not skepticism. That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc. See the comments on this article about how to do a Fibonacci recursive exampl…

I found video to be every effective teaching tool for programming. I don't know why, but I can read something 10 times and didn't get it but If I see video covering the same material it clicks.

The only thing I don't like about video is that I can't do search for it. Sometime they show you a piece of code and you don't remember exactly where, you can't easily go to that part of the video.

Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science

#38

Post by jleader »

dexy wrote: post #19
non123 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember I first bought a Java book to learn to program when I was around 15-16. I tried for days but couldn't figure out why the first example program wouldn't work, it was because it wasn't System.out.print1n but System.out.println. In the font the code was written in, I couldn't tell. Because of that it wasn't until at least a year later that I didn't try again.

Exact same thing happened to me when trying to do my first cs problem set. It was some filename that I was sure had a 1 in it but it was an l. It's almost as if courier tries as hard as possible to make the two look the same.

Courier was intended to look like a traditional typewriter font. For many decades, most typewriters didn't have a key for 1 (one), you were supposed to use the lower-case l (ell) instead.

Teletypes did have a one key, probably because they were all-uppercase, so there wasn't a lowercase ell available.

Re: Khan Academy: Computer Science

#39

Post by capnrefsmmat »

brador wrote: post #31
sosuke wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you suggest to change that? I love Khan Academy as a learning tool for myself but I wouldn't have the first idea on what to do next with it.

Adaptive learning is the way forward. They've been planning it for ages and it's taking way too long to roll out fully. I'm gunning to compete with my own platform, but he's in as a non-profit which means a for-profit doesn't stand a chance, especially with the timescales the sector operates on. The only way to create something to compete and light that fire under their ass would be a "generous donation". I think I c…

What sort of adaptive learning do you mean? I'd guess you mean something like ALEKS:

http://www.aleks.com/about_aleks

...but I'm not sure. The Khan Academy exercise framework is also open-source, so presumably you can contribute that way.

Post reply on HN